
“ Training Essentials for Ultrarunning is a breakthrough work that brings together sound scientific principles and years of coaching experience to create the definitive training manual of our time.” —DEAN KARNAZES, AUTHOR OF ULTRAMARATHON MAN Copyright © 2016 by CTS All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or photocopy or otherwise, without the prior written permis- sion of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations within critical articles and reviews. Acute Training Load, Chronic Training Load, Training Stress Balance, Normalized Pace, and Training Stress Score are trademarks of Peaksware, LLC. Ironman® is a registered trademark of World Triathlon Corporation. 3002 Sterling Circle, Suite 100 Boulder, Colorado 80301-2338 USA (303) 440-0601 · Fax (303) 444-6788 · E-mail [email protected] Distributed in the United States and Canada by Ingram Publisher Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Koop, Jason, author. | Rutberg, Jim. Title: Training essentials for ultrarunning : how to train smarter, race faster, and maximize your ultramarathon performance / Jason Koop with Jim Rutberg. Description: Boulder, Colorado : VeloPress, [2016] | “Distributed in the United States and Canada by Ingram Publisher Services”—T.p. verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015048379 (print) | LCCN 2016007183 (ebook) | ISBN 9781937715458 (Paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781937716806 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Marathon running—Training. | Ultra running. Classification: LCC GV1065.17.T73 K66 2016 (print) | LCC GV1065.17.T73 (ebook) | DDC 796.42/52—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048379 For information on purchasing VeloPress books, please call (800) 811-4210, ext. 2138, or visit www.velopress.com. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Cover design by theBookDesigners; cover photograph by PatitucciPhoto Interior design by Erin Farrell/Factor E Creative 16 17 18 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Foreword by Dean Karnazes ix 1 The Ultrarunning Revolution 1 2 The High-Performance Ultrarunner 27 3 The Physiology of Building a Better Engine 49 4 Failure Points and How to Fix Them 63 5 The Four Disciplines of Ultrarunning 93 6 The Technology of Ultrarunning 109 7 Train Smarter, Not More: Key Workouts 123 8 Organizing Your Training: The Long-Range Plan 151 9 Activating Your Training: The Short-Range Plan 171 10 Fueling and Hydrating for the Long Haul 185 11 Creating Your Personal Race Strategies 231 12 Racing Wisely 273 13 Coaching Guide to North American Ultras 279 American River 50 / Badwater 135 / Hardrock 100 / Javelina Jundred / JFK 50 / Lake Sonoma 50 / Leadville Trail 100 / Vermont 100 / Wasatch Front 100 / Western States 100 Epilogue 313 Appendix: The Long-Range Plan 315 References and Further Reading 319 Acknowledgments 333 Index 335 About the Authors 339 CHAPTER 1 THE ULTRARUNNING REVOLUTION There is nothing like the experience of finishing an ultramarathon. As the final miles click by, there’s a lot of time to think about how far you’ve come, not just over the past day or two but also through the months of training and lifetime of experiences that led to that moment. As a runner, I have been fortunate to experience the final rush of emotion that seems to sweep us over the finish line, and as a coach, I have had the privilege of experiencing it again and again with the athletes I work with. The beauty of ultrarunning is its accessibility; ours is a sport that is open to everyone. But the sheer magnitude of 50- and 100-mile races is intimidating to many, and for a long time information about preparing for ultramarathons has been hard to find and largely based on “it worked for me” anecdotes. This is the problem I set out to address when I started coaching ultrarunners more than a decade ago. What I’ve learned, and what I hope to teach in the following pages, is: Training for ultrarunning isn’t as complicated as it may seem, and there’s a logical progression that yields measurable and meaningful improvements regardless of your starting point. I’m not here to make ultrarunning easy; it’s not. Instead, I’ve devoted my career to applying sound sports science and effective coaching meth- ods to the unique demands presented by ultradistance running so you can push yourself farther and have more fun every step of the way. 1 2 TRAINING ESSENTIALS FOR ULTRARUNNING THE BIG IDEAS Before I explain more about my history and what led me to develop a unique coaching philosophy and training system for ultrarunning, I want to give you a preview of some of the main ideas you’ll find in this book. • Fitness makes everything better. This seems like an obvious statement, but when you look at how most ultrarunners train, by simply running as many miles as possible, you see that improving cardiovascular fitness isn’t their priority. Being more fit isn’t just about going faster or being more competi- tive, either. Fitness enables you to run more comfortably, with more control, and with better technique. It not only gives you the ability to get yourself out of trouble if things go wrong but also keeps you out of a lot of trouble in the first place. • Structured training is the best way to build fitness. “Just go run” works for a little while, but you quickly reach a plateau where progress stops. More mileage alone isn’t the answer, but unfortunately it’s the default solution for most athletes. In order to make progress, your training has to have struc- ture, with workouts that target specific energy systems, purposeful recovery periods, and a progression that applies the correct amount of training stress. • It takes more than fitness to reach the finish line. What separates ultrarunning from other endurance sports is the impact of everything else beyond fitness in determining whether or not you will reach the finish line. If you have suc- cessfully finished a marathon, you have the physical capacity to finish a 50K, 50-mile, or even a 100-mile race. But ultramarathons are not simply longer marathons. Your limiting factor isn’t your physical capacity but rather your habits, nutrition and hydration strategies, gear selection, knowledge of the course, decision-making capabilities, and forged toughness. • Your mind is your greatest weapon. Ultrarunning is hard. The training is dif- ficult, and the events are even more so. The conditions, the course, and your body will conspire against you. Ultrarunning is an intellectual sport; you have to think your way through the challenges. In events that last up to (and 1 THE ULTRARUNNING REVOLUTION 3 sometimes beyond) 30 hours, there’s a lot of time for plans to go awry as well as a lot of time to right the ship. You have to find solutions to the puzzle, often when you’re tired, hungry, wet, and cold. To be successful, you need to train your mind just as much as you train your body. STARTING FROM SCRATCH I have been a coach for nearly as long as I’ve been an athlete. At the age of 16, I got my first gig coaching a summer track team, the Texas Stars Track Club. Twice a day, every day, in the searing Texas summer heat, I herded dozens of kids through simple drills and conditioning regimens. Although it would be a stretch to say I was a legitimate “coach” at that point, one thing was certain: I fell in love with seeing peo- ple improve. Helping an athlete “get” the Fosbury Flop (a high-jumping technique), spring out of the blocks properly, or run a personal record (PR) captivated me. As you can imagine, tangible improvement came easily for these young teens. Many of them had never run before. No matter what they did, they were almost sure to do it better, faster, or higher the next day. But what also captivated me was seeing how a logical approach to training helped them understand the “why” behind what we were teaching. You can’t simply tell 12-year-old high jumpers to “get your butt over the bar” and magically expect them to flop over the bar like a pro. You have to logi- cally introduce each aspect of the high jump before they get how to flop. You need to establish their run-up, their penultimate step, and how their shoulders should line up while they are in the air. I discovered that summer that if you do this methodi- cally and in the right order, they get it. Tell them to simply “get your butt over the bar,” and it’s a disaster. Coaching had a wonderful logic: You instructed an athlete on a series of tasks, they accomplished those tasks, and they became better athletes. Fast-forward to 2001. I accepted a coaching internship at Carmichael Training Systems (CTS) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and began to work with cyclists, triathletes, and marathon runners of all levels. I was surprised to find that the coaching process I had fallen in love with as a teenager still applied: Have an ath- lete perform a series of workouts in a logical order, and he or she improves. But instead of standing in 100-plus-degree Texas heat watching kids run around in 4 TRAINING ESSENTIALS FOR ULTRARUNNING circles, now I was coaching mostly from behind a computer and by telephone. Maneuvering an athlete into starting blocks gave way to analyzing training files. The series of tasks morphed into structured workouts that built up into weeks and phases of endurance training.
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